by JT Lawrence
9
Tentacles of Depression Around My Heart
I won’t bore the page with details of my hangover. All I’ll say is that on a scale of one to ten it’s a robust nine. The only other time I have ever had a bigger headache is when I had undiagnosed, untreated malaria in Lagos and spent a few delirious days sweating in my seedy hotel room, until a maid started screaming that I was dead and they arranged for me to be taken to a hospital. I was touched that she took it so much to heart but later found out that she was a deeply superstitious person and thought that I had a juju on me (Nigerian curses are contagious) and so was yelling for her own life, not mine. The worst parts of malaria were the crazy nighttimes, when I never really knew where I was and my dreams just became more and more surreal. At first I thought the symptoms were the side-effects of the malaria meds; then I suspected food poisoning; then that I had been abducted and locked in this pokey room with its resident cockroaches. Now there are cockroaches and then there are Lagos Cockroaches: the size of your thumb and built like army tanks. Pesticideresistant-waterresistant-fireresistant-heelofyourshoeresistant. In the beginning it freaked me out, turning on the hotel light and seeing these ungodly things scatter for shelter, so quickly, wondering if they are imagined. Lying on the stained bed in the darkness, the bugs became less bashful and eventually came out to play. I remember – whether imagined or not – how they felt on my exposed skin, how their hard thoraxes shone in the moonlight, how their needle-like feelers felt in my ears, my nostrils. And the noise they made: scratchycrickety. At times when I thought I was coming out of the stupor I wondered if I had conjured them up but they swiftly asserted their existence: in the minibar fridge, crawling out of the porcelain basin plughole to surprise me while I was brushing my teeth and, once, a crushed corpse in my underwear. I almost jumped out of the window.
Lagos is a noisy city – especially at night. It comes alive with a raw, pulsing energy, like Rio’s ugly sister with colourful litter and ringing gunshots and humidity that smacks you in the face. An old English professor of mine who has a reputation for his persistent puns and poignant turns of phrase refers to Nigeria as the Armpit of Africa. I’ve never known an entire country to be described so aptly in only three words.
So while my head feels like Hiroshima and my lacerated feet are stinging, I know that in theory it could be far, far worse. That’s something I have going for me: a bank of really bad experiences – which sounds awful but in reality is great, because I can always compare my current state of affairs with some of my worst and come out feeling like Lucky Jim. Maybe that’s why God made childbirth so painful, so that when your life is wrecked by children you know it could be worse. I keep the idea of my mother at bay. It could always be worse. I throw back two Disprins and a bottle of water. I’m sure they’ll dissolve in my stomach.
I’m sorry I didn’t get to enjoy the twins. Every time I think about them I get a pleasant twinge in my pants. I’ve tried a lot of things with girls (and the occasional guy) and have had more than my fair share of ménage à trois, my first going back as far as high school (which turned out to be a disaster, as you can imagine, no matter how much I closed my eyes and thought of the theory of Pythagoras). I still remember the girl, her face pinched with the shock of what had just happened. I guess the twin fantasy will remain just that, for now.
It is only when I walk through the house and see the devastation that it hits me, hard in the bottom of my stomach. Eve. Sucker punch.
The lounge floor is muddied with chocolate. The chandelier hangs askew.
I think she is lost to me forever. I’m not sure friends recover from that kind of fight. Especially after – I smack my tender forehead – God, I tried to kiss her. What the fucking fuck was I thinking? The shame makes me sweat.
I should call to apologise but I’d rather pull out my own toenails.
There are smashed flutes and tumblers and splinters of glass throughout the house, as well as the obligatory red wine stains (Flokati rug in foyer, wooden floor and deck chaise) and cigarette burns (sitting room Persian).
Maybe it’s best to cut our ties altogether. She wants me to be someone I’m not and I want her very badly, just as she is. Besides, she seems to have become morally superior, and morally superior people are like piles.
The air outside is hot and dry. I retrieve my phone from the bush. I can see beer bottles at the bottom of the pool. Who knows what else is in there. I’ll have to have the pool drained. Otherwise I can imagine, mid-swim, mid-lark, stepping hard on the stem of a broken martini glass, the sharp point being driven through the thick sole-skin and muscle, embedding itself deep in the soft tissue, like the needle of an angry urchin. I would have to pull myself out and end up bleeding to death on the bright green grass of the slope, only to be discovered by the caterers coming to pick up the last of their bains-marie. Or worse: a clucking Francina.
Not-so-celebrated Author Impaled on Designer Cocktail Glass.
God, the humiliation.
I could make it work, though. Just before my final breath I could hurl myself back into the swimming pool and float for my mock Gatsbyesque ending.
Maybe Eve and I were just caught up in the passion of the moment. Maybe there is something to be salvaged. But what is the point when I know that I can never have her? Who wants a friend who looks like Eve? It’s like being given a Maserati on blocks.
In Peter Godwin’s memoir ‘When A Crocodile Eats The Sun’ he expounds the theory that people love harder in Africa. He writes that in Africa, death is never far away – ‘Death has a seat at every table – and urgent winds whisper memento mori: You too shall die. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal.’. Maybe that’s why, he says, you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The ‘drama of life [here] is amplified by its constant proximity to death.’.
People love harder on this continent where things can be taken from you in a single violent fingerontrigger or flickofablade. I wonder if this goes a small way to explain why my feelings for Eve are so intense. God, I love her. She riles me with her horny body and virtuous lips. What will I do without her? My inky cloak descends upon me.
I look around, my arms drop to my sides and I feel the now-familiar tentacles of depression wrapping around my heart.
Just before I drop to my knees a spectacular idea startles me. I feel as though I have been stung.
It hits me between the eyes as clean and sharp as an archer’s arrow.
My whole body gasps.
It’s The Answer. To Everything.
The only other thought: that there is no other way.
I will have to kill Eve.
“The advantage of emotions is that they lead us astray.”
- Oscar Wilde
10
Eve’s Graceful Demise
I have to plan her murder. I am pinned to that fate like a crucified man to his olive tree.
In my mind’s eye there is the dry and desolate landscape of my life; planted in the middle is Eve’s murder, startling in its clarity and brilliance. I fight the idea for a while but it’s like losing a mental arm-wrestle, millimetre by millimetre. God knows I love her, have always loved her but, for the sake of my own survival, I need to do this. Destinies have to be met. Sacrifices have to be made.
This is what will save my career. And with my career – everything else. I know it. Already I feel the hot excitement in my fingers. I am nothing without writing. It is my life force.
And my writing, like a certain bloodthirsty plant, needs to be fed.
I begin the planning tentatively, tasting it, rolling it around in my mouth. As it picks up momentum I find myself tantalised. There are so many ways to kill someone I am almost overwhelmed. Worried that I will become rabid and crazed like a family pet after tasting human blood, I take a step back and realise that this has to be approached in a cold and logical way: without the psychological chaos of bloodlust. Hitler was, after all, a vegetarian.
I take a cold shower (Inuit De
luge™), shave, dress in sensible clothes, and unplug my cappuccino machine. Caffeine has no place in this no-nonsense man’s bloodstream. No sir, not today. Even the Juicerator is shunned: who knows what effect all that fructose can have on a sober man. If I had a tie, I would wear it now. But I don’t. So I make up for it by wearing tan loafers I never knew I had. I begin to wish that I had a dictaphone to speak into, in a clipped American accent, like Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks. I pretend to have one anyway and, after pressing the imaginary red button in the palm of my hand, I say “Diane, remind me to buy a tie the next time I’m in town. An appropriate one, with stripes. You’ll be pleased to know that for now, I have other things to worry about. I received the doughnuts you sent me, the ones with holes. Thank you. Diane, I need to go, I have a murder to plan.” Stop.
On the kitchen table I set out reams of white paper, pens and pencils. I crack my knuckles and do a few wrist rotations and breathing exercises before I sit down. I need to be cool and collected. I need to be methodical. I wish my stomach wouldn’t flutter so. I try to keep my mind even.
Where do I start?
In my limited experience of murder and speaking very generally, there seem to be three different ways of dying and eight different causes (please accept my apologies for my oversimplification; deconstructing death: it is necessary for me to get my head around this). Scribbled on the paper before me I have:
The Three Ways of Dying:
Accident
Suicide
Murder
The Eight Instruments of Death:
Weapon
Illness
Weather
Car
Fire
Water
Toxins (including venom, poison and drugs)
Asphyxiation
Now you could put these lists side by side and play joining the columns and come up with perhaps (I’m no mathematician) A Billion Ways To Die.
Id est, draw a line from Suicide to Weapon and you get hanging, a shotgun to the head, or taking the Panini Press into the jacuzzi with you. It’s a bit like playing Cluedo. A line from Suicide to Illness will give you a heart attack via anorexia nervosa, or dying from Pneumonia after having sex without a condom. The list seems infinite. Then of course there are other broad categories such as homicide, patricide, matricide, infanticide. Cross Murder with Water and you get women driven by demons who drown their babies. Or Murder with Weapon: fathers who gun down their entire families, or lonely school kids in trench coats who don’t like Mondays and take revenge the best way they know how. I try it out by resurrecting a few top-of-mind deaths I can think of, and all of them fit neatly somewhere on my list.
Steve Biko: Murder, Weapon
Leigh Matthews: Murder, Weapon
Sylvia Plath: Suicide, Asphyxiation
Helen Martins: Suicide, Poison
Ingrid Jonker: Suicide, Water
James Dean: Accident, Car
Ernest Hemingway: Suicide, Weapon
Michael Jackson: Accident, Drugs
Of course, some peculiar ways of dying are also revealed playing this fatal game of join-the-dots. Cross Murder and Weather: that could be interesting. Suicide and Freak Accident? Weapon and Illness: it’s a story waiting to be told.
It goes without saying that there are a lot of violent deaths in South Africa: a legacy of our fractured history. You won’t catch me bemoaning our crime rate at a dinner party (yawn!) but I’m not in denial either. It’s no secret that we have the highest rape stats in the world. It’s said that women born in SA have a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read. And those are only the reported attacks. Sure, the old joke goes that 99% of statistics are bullshit, but where there is smoke ... Or in this case, where there is blood, there will most likely be bodies.
So it would make sense to dress up the murder as an attempted hijacking. In a country where there are thirty-nine violent hijackings a day it would simply disappear. I am sure a lot of assassins use this cloak. South Africa could become a veritable knock-off travel destination for aggrieved spouses. Honeymoon Hits. Perhaps it is already. Hired guns and better halves are not to be put off by Dewani. But a bullet in Gugulethu doesn’t feel right, not for Eve. She is worthy of more.
All projects require a title, so I will name this ‘Eve’s Graceful Demise’. I write it in black koki in large letters. It takes up a whole sheet of paper.
It could be bloody (there is a satisfying symbolism in blood) but it shouldn’t be too messy. Of course there shouldn’t be any pain involved at all; I’ll be strict about that. But it should be passionate. She is, after all, my unrequited love. We can play the ‘If I can’t have her then no one will’ card.
A hit man (Mr. ‘Jones’ from Fochville: R12K a hit, R20K for two – almost makes you want to knock off another person just for the discount, like those three-for-two golf socks at the cash point you know you don’t need but you end up buying anyway) will probably be the safest option as far as not being caught is concerned but it doesn’t feel personal enough. No, I should be able to look her in the eyes as they close. I need to have courage. It should be a clear murder and should not be able to be construed as an accident. Henceforth I cross out the following on the list: hitting head on slippery bathtub; fingers mistakenly placed in electric socket; rotten oysters). It needs to be authentic. An overdose is tempting (mainlining heroin after drinking a bottle of Kristal might be the most delightful way to exit this world) but will most likely be construed as suicide.
Maybe something highly original, that no one else would think of. Could I create the circumstances for a freak accident? Flood? Earthquake? Lightning? African killer bee attack? I could be creative and have her die from eating rhubarb leaves (too old-fashioned) or moonflower seeds (too obscure), or give her a rare tropical disease (not practical. Also: contagious.). Or, I could distract her on a bird-watching trip in the Waterberg and push her off the edge of a cliff, but that seems a little underhanded.
A fire! A fire is very glamorous. Of course she would be dead beforehand, I wouldn’t make her suffocate or burn, it would just be a way to get rid of her body. If we were at the coast I could put her on a boat and explode it. In South America I could sell her organs and leave her empty carcass in a refrigerated truck. If we were in Greenland I could drive an icicle through her heart and never have to worry about the cops finding the murder weapon. Then there’s the old Roald Dahl favourite: braining someone with a frozen leg of lamb, roasting it with some carrots and spuds and serving it to the cops who come to investigate. There is, of course, the method used famously by the Turkish nobility who served chopped-up tiger whiskers to their enemies. The legend has it that the barbs on the whiskers stick in your intestines and cause you to leisurely bleed to death.
I also cross the following off the list: death by nicotine or Mr Muscle Window injection; hit-and-run; ricin-laced umbrella stab; silver body paint; gas leak; butterfly punch; arsenic-in-soup; puffer fish in the shower; strangulation; pillow-smothering. I find pillow-smothering such an interesting one. It’s a pillow, for Christ’s sake. Pillows are clean and soft and are associated with dreams and comfort and sex. In my opinion only Very Bad People would turn that into a murder weapon. A gunshot is so quick and can take place with half an intention. Pillow smothering requires a full two minutes of heavy-handedness and a sense of commitment I just don’t think I have.
After hours of throwing a paper ball against the wall I realise that the answer may not be in my brain and that I need some outside help.
11
Don’t Act Creepy, or,
Pink Strychnine
On the way to the library I feel fit. I haven’t felt this good in seasons. I feel so good that I stop at the carwash to have the Jag given the platinum treatment. What it really needs is a good service, a new tail light and a bit of a panel beating but I haven’t been able to afford that for a while. The sorrowful glances which come my way for having a dirty, dinged sports car is enough to drive anyone off the edge. Eve
n taxi drivers shake their heads at me. But today money is no object for my beautiful baby. As long as they don’t cut up the credit card. It occurs to me that I am spending money I don’t have on a car I don’t own. Ah, credit is a beautiful thing! I watch the attendant swipe the card and wait. Three, two, one – and yes! – the payment goes through. I turn the key and the nice carwash man waves me off. He may as well be waving a chequered flag. I pop the car into first, rev a little to warm her up, and accelerate in a wide arc onto the main road.
God, Jo’burg is beautiful in summer. Everything is so green. I can’t help feeling optimistic. I love going to the library. Especially nowadays when no one really needs a library because of Kindle and Google. It’s like having a huge revolving bookcase all to oneself. I walk up the corkscrew staircase with a bounce in my step.
My mother introduced me to libraries. It was ‘our thing’: books and reading. Emily would use her books to make stables for her fragrant pastelplastic ponies while Mom and I smirked at her.
If we had been good children during the day, she would let us climb into bed with her and read to us. One child on either side, with the book balanced on the incline of her warm, slanted thighs. I would edge nearer and nearer as the story progressed so that my whole body was in contact with hers. She would fidget and tell me to move over. ‘Claustrophobic’ was one of the first words I learnt. I craved proximity to her as if I had some kind of prescience of her leaving us. As if I knew that one day she would just vanish, and take colour with her.
But I still have those memories; she couldn’t take those away, those golden hours. I still have Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Sometimes I wonder if I truly did love books as much as I remember, or if I was so desperate for her attention that I just grabbed on to the only thing that she would – with reluctance – offer me. In true Oedipal fashion I guess I had a love/hate relationship with my mother’s world of fiction. It erratically offered me the bliss of library trips and bedtime stories, but more often it took our mother away from us.